Page:The Queens of England.djvu/44

32 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. his own declining health, had now completely broken the spirit of Henry the Fifth, and on July I, 1125, he expired at Utrecht, whither he had been accompanied by the empress. During his illness he was constantly attended by Matilda, and also by several nobles, to one of whom, Duke Frederic of Swabia, he committed the care of the empress, and of the imperial insignia, until the election of his successor. A strange tale was afterwards circulated and believed, that the emperor one night, the lights being extinguished and the attendants away, had risen from his bed, and, clothing himself in coarse woollen garments, had gone forth barefoot and alone from the palace, and had never been seen more. Again, it was said, that he had become a monk, and ended his days at Angers, as a servant in an hospital ; and to add still more charms to the romantic tale, it was believed that this being made known to Matilda some years after her second marriage, she had hastened to him, attended him on his death-bed, and acknowledged him as her first husband. The Empress Matilda was only in her twenty-first year when her husband died, and having left no children, he was succeeded in the imperial throne by his nephew Lotharius. Her father, therefore, the King of England, having lost his son in the fatal White Ship, and having now no hope of male issue by his second wife, resolved to recall the widowed empress and declare her his successor. Matilda did not quit without reluctance a land in which she had been a resident during fifteen years, whose manners and habits she had adopted, and where she was much beloved. Be- sides, Henry the Fifth had left her a rich dower, and this she must forego in returning to her native country. She complied, however, with her father's wish, and attended not only by a splendid tram, which he had deputed to escort her, but also by a retinue of German princes and nobles, some of whom were aspirants for her hand, joined him and her stepmother in Normandy. Henry lost no time in convincing the German visitors that he had no intention of parting again from his only surviving child ; upon which they returned to their homes, while he pro- ceeded to England with Matilda, and his consort the young and beautiful Adelais. Matilda now for the first time in her life enjoyed the happiness of a female friend, and contracted an intimacy with her good and amiable stepmother, which termin- ated only with their lives.